As with the soil, here
again there was a daily battle, endless cares and endless fears. Little
Gervais was stricken with fever and narrowly escaped death. Rose, too,
one day filled them with the direst alarm, for she fell from a tree in
their presence, but fortunately with no worse injury than a sprain. And,
on the other hand, they were happy in the three others, Blaise, Denis,
and Ambroise, who proved as healthy as young oak-trees. And when Marianne
gave birth to her sixth child, on whom they bestowed the gay name of
Claire, Mathieu celebrated the new pledge of their affection by further
acquisitions.
Then, during the two ensuing years, their battles and sadness and joy all
resulted in victory once more. Marianne gave birth, and Mathieu conquered
new lands. There was ever much labor, much life expended, and much life
realized and harvested. This time it was a question of enlarging the
estate on the side of the moorlands, the sandy, gravelly slopes where
nothing had grown for centuries. The captured sources of the tableland,
directed towards those uncultivated tracts, gradually fertilized them,
covered them with increasing vegetation.
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